Of course, the Brexit referendum was an exception to this rule, where a simple majority could effect profound consitutional change.
In the US, by contrast, such a constitutional change requires a 2/3 majority in Congress or state legislatures. While a US president can be elected without even a plurality of the popular vote, as we saw in the fatal elections of 2000 and 2016.
So the two systems are mirror images of each other in their barriers to outsider populist currents!

I agree 100 % with Barry Eichengreen, but like to add a few important factors that helped Trump:
1. Majority of White Voters specially Republicans in USA had not liked President Obama for his two terms and wanted to change.
2. Most White, African american and Hispanic Males were not ready for a Woman to be their President.

BARRIERS TO POPULISM
The realignment of Economics with Democracy is inevitable - Institutional Architecture notwithstanding.
The Author believes that Britain's Institutional Architecture - prevents Populism and Political Extremism.
BREXIT IS proof - Democracy will always overcome Economics of Inequality.
Democracy's DNA was devoid of Dollarized Electorates - when it was created 2500 years ago.
Economic Extremism needed checks and balances - Trump indeed is Brexit plus plus.
TRUMP deserves respect - Yes, The Trump Template will be without the Intellect of the Masterminds.
The Marginalized Majority in Democracy - often produce the Remedy that remained elusive, despite the Masterminds.
You only need to evoke Ronald Reagan.
And the end of One Evil Empire - USSR.
There are several more.

There is a fundamental difference between British and American political culture that speaks to the differences in public/political sensibilities and outcomes.
Powell was very well educated and had a command of English that is a prerequisite for elevation to the realm of national politics in Britain. Unfortunately, Trump lacks both attributes but shares Powell's embrace of xenophobic and racist sentiment.
In Britain, it would be inconceivable that Trump's intellectual limitations would allow him to win the post of Prime Minister but he can become President of the United States -notwithstanding his obvious lack of intellectual preparation for the position.
The cost of ill-prepared leadership in international affairs is national humiliation.

The most important factor in Powell's lack of success was the bipartisan support of social democratic policies in the seventies.The working class had a good time in the seventies and in the eighties fought hard to preserve the social democratic consensus. Britain could have followed the Nordic model, but the working class was defeated with the connivance of the middle class with the City. The American working class has been decimated and Trump is an apparition in its alcohol and drug fueled nightmare.

You are spouting the usual socialist claptrap - trying to rewrite history. The working class were pushed down a disastrous path by the Trades Union requirement to turn the country into a communist state. Along with failing nationalised industries controlled by the shop stewards, Jack Jones (leader of the TUC) called for shop stewards on every high street! The Nordic option was never on the table from the far left, although the "appeasers" in politics, both in the Labour party & the Tories, did try to go in that direction but the Unions cratered the whole idea & thus had to be utterly defeated. And they were - no conspiracies - pretty straightforward stuff both at the time & in hindsight.

Barry Eichengreen sees a "historical figure" from Britain as a good parallel with Trump, explaining how the former reality TV buffoon conjures up memories of the "British nativist firebrand, Enoch Powell in the late 1960s and early 1970s." Both Trump and Powell are anti-immigration and pro-Russia. Back then the British working class resented Asian and Caribbean immigrants; America's white working class sees Mexicans and Muslims as pariahs. The only difference is that without media support Powell couldn't "mobilize public opinion." With Twitter, Breitbart and Fox that served Trump as a propaganda- and PR machinery, he became president.
On a fateful day in 1968 the skilled orator, Powell delivered one of the 20th Century's most explosive political speeches in Birmingham. He said: "Like the Roman, I see the Tiber foaming with much blood". Powell's infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech was deeply critical of migration to Britain. Althought he didn't say those words, the speech condemned him to the margins of British politics and its reverberations continue to this day. He, as a "committed nationalist" opposed foreign policies - like the EEC (European Economic Community) membership - that would threaten Britain's independence, and "compromise British identity and sovereignty." He became an outcast and left politics. But his ideas have inspired Brexiteers led by UKIP and British National Party to adopt anti-EU stance and reject free movement of EU citizens.
Socially and intellectually the two men hardly share anything in common. Unlike Trump, Powell hailed from the lower middle class, but was well versed in Latin and philosophy. Born in 1912 he suspected in 1930 that the peace of World War One be temporary. He condemned Britain’s attempts to appease Nazi Germany. While fighting in World War Two, he became convinced that one of the main aims of the US was to destroy the British Empire. In 1943, he wrote home to suggest the US would be a bigger enemy than Germany or Japan. He bought a Russian dictionary, and "appreciated the Soviet Union for its World War II sacrifices, its prideful nationalism, and as a counterbalance to other self-interested foreign powers."
Enoch voted for Labour in 1945 because he was angry with the Munich Agreement under the Tories, but soon joined the party. In 1950 he was elected MP. In 1956 he attended a committee advocating restrictions on immigration. Later he became one of the MPs who were against the removal of British Troops from the Suez Canal, fearing Britain wouldn't have the resources to retake it. He lost faith in Britain as a a world power.
Why Powell failed where Trump succeeded is Powell's reluctance to "harness his followers’ nativism and economic insecurity to build an anti-system movement that might weaken the foundations of the country’s parliamentary democracy." He was a "man of principle" and believed in "the British parliamentary system." Trump is more of an opportunist than an ideologue. He incites violence and pays lip-service to draining the "swamp" he himself wants to preserve.
The author says "public dissatisfaction with British politics in Powell’s heyday was more limited than Americans’ political dissatisfaction in the age of Trump. Even in the economically disastrous 1970s, British voters were not prepared to reject the political status quo." They endured "discontent and disillusion" without questioning their "political institutions." The mood has changed considerably since then. In June 2016 supporters of Brexit were willing to plunge their country into uncertainty, because they questioned Britain's institutions that abide by EU laws.
The author concludes, "the structure of the political system worked against a maverick like Powell. In Britain, MPs, not the electorate, choose the prime minister.... This institutional arrangement creates a high barrier to populist outsiders." But in America the Electoral College is supposed to serve as a compromise between election of the president by a vote in Congress and election of the president by a popular vote. History shows that this system has its pitfalls. Trump was just lucky to be propelled to victory with help of foreign meddling. Unfortunately America's presidential system of government "is not superior in terms of the checks it imposes on political extremists." Trump's win shows that "the opposite may be true."

Powell was Health Minister when a large number of West Indian and Sub Continental doctors and nurses were recruited. This created the impression that he was not sincere in his opposition to coloured immigration. Furthermore, unlike Wilson (academically as brilliant as Powell, but with better political instincts) Powell had not understood the Baby Boom 'Beatles generation' and appeared more and more like a Monty Python cartoon.
He was a Hayekian long before that became fashionable and it is just as well that he jumped ship before he was pushed. Imagine how he'd have suffered had he been in govt. during the Barber boom!
Trump and Powell have nothing in common. It is foolish to compare them. Powell had a theory about British Nationality of an abstruse kind which motivated his stand on coloured immigration. However, there was already a bipartisan consensus on that issue so Powell had no real salience. It is doubtful that the British median voter was in favour of repatriation. Curbs on migration were good enough.
The real reason Powellites were marginalized during the Seventies was because it was the Unions who decided Economic policy. It must have been a comfort to him that Thatcher- who broke the Unions- was inspired by his Hayekian ideas though, it must be said, she rejected colour prejudice.

This article stretches the parallel somewhat. Powell wad an ardent democrat he was really nothing like Trump. The only parallel I can see is his appeal to blue collar voters and particularly with regards to immigration.

I agree with Prof. Eichengreen's tentative conclusion that a presidential system of government is more prone to result in an extremist leader than a parliamentary system. However, I don't think that the comparison between Powell and Trump lends any credence to that conclusion because the world was very different in 1968 than it is now, and the differences between the UK and US go far deeper than just the differences in their respective governmental structures.

NYT's Nate Cohn: Trump won by trading places with Obama:
"Just as Mr. Obama’s team caricatured Mr. Romney, Mr. Trump caricatured Mrs. Clinton as a tool of Wall Street" ... "At every point of the race, Mr. Trump was doing better among white voters without a college degree than Mitt Romney did in 2012 — by a wide margin.

" ... Mr. Obama] would have won Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin each time even if Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee had been severed from their states and cast adrift into the Great Lakes.)"
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Agenda: Dems to get loudly busy rebuilding labor union density state by progressive state and not so progressive states. Republicans will have no place to hide.

Agenda for most regressive states (20) -- that bar some or most gov employ bargaining: BINDING ARBITRATION can be asserted to be a First Amendment protected right -- to challenge states that bar state government entities from bargaining with their employees. First Amendment protects right to organize unions -- but courts say does not compel govs to bargain because too weighted in too many ways in favor of employees. But, cannot leave high and dry if there is a third way -- not with First Amendment rights at stake -- not when binding arbitration is sort of the definition of a process that seeks to fairly re-balance union/government bargaining.

And only takes court action; not massive organization.

For more progressive states: if widespread state laws already criminally barred employers from using market power to muscle collective bargaining of any description (firing organizers and joiners) -- IOW against monopsony in the labor market -- and for the first time ever Congress was considering NLRA type legislation via setting up union certification processes -- said theoretical Congress might not happen to include any criminal level enforcement of its new law for a variety of possible reasons -- might want to see the results of various state enforcement schemes, etc. -- and might decide to leave criminal enforcement solely to the states (at least for a time).

Which is to say would be an exact legal parallel to states, today, making union busting a felony -- no worry at all about crossing federal preemption should occur at all. The state laws I envision today would protect any employee or ad hoc bargaining group -- not just those attempting to organize under federally prescribed rubrics -- to reassure, again, would be no clash with federal preemption.

For musings on what else and how to dump the Trump boys by banging the drum loudly for labor see here (work in progress): http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2016/12/wet-backs-and-narrow-backs-irish.html

An excellent piece by Barry Eichengreen! I lived in Britain in the 1970s (and early 80s) but had forgotten about Enoch Powell. Thanks for refreshing my memory of those days and for reminding me of the similarities and differences between the two men. I am now even more concerned about the journey America has embarked upon!

While I have the utmost respect for Prof Eichengreen, this is a rather curious comparison in my view. When Enoch Powell made his "rivers of blood" speech, he was railing against so many Indians and Pakistanis entering the country, which was completely legal in the early 1960s, as subjects of the British Commonwealth had the right to settle in the UK. The Commonwealth Immigration Acts of 1962 and 1968 curved immigration from this source, and a surge in immigration took place to beat the implementation of both acts in 1961 and 1967. This was the reason for Enoch Powell's "river of blood" speech - the idea that too much immigration would lead to conflict. Trump on the other hand is not complaining about legal immigration to the US - quite the converse, he is complaining about illegal immigration. So I am not sure that this comparison really goes beyond the obvious - both were against too much immigration!

There is something about the economics community, which cheered on the economic policies that produced a very mild revolution, then turned to political nonsense instead of trying to correct its economic advice.

The astonishing thing is that a policy that raised the Dow from 750 in 1982 and 6500 in 2009 to 20,000 on the base of stagnant wages produced by an infinite supply of labor through outsourcing and immigration did not produce a more severe revolution earlier.

Kuhn seems right that a change of scientific paradigm cannot be produced by a new reality. The older generation has to retire or die off. Let us hope that a new generation arises before the 2024 election so we don't have the 20 years between FDR's election and Eisenhower's.

There are two issues at stake in this comparison: race and constitution.
Farage, like Powell, used immigration as a tool to get public support.But Powell used it on openly racist grounds, which wrecked his political prospects. Farage by contrast used immigration as an illustration that towards the EU, the UK's policy was made by the EU. When accused of "racism", he pointed out that an Australian points system would allow for a policy open to the world.
The UK constitution in predicated, as stated by the recent High Court case on parliament's role in the process of Brexit, is predicated on Magna Carta(the limitation of the executive's powers) and on 1689(habeas corpus and constitutional monarchy as we know it know and from which the US constitution is derived). The history of the UK is one long history against the abuse of power by the executive; In the 1972 European C communities Act, Prime Minister Heath in effect has parliament mute its own powers, and greatly expanded the powers of the executive to make laws with other member states. The key institution for this is the committee of permanent representatives(COREPER), where law was decided by governments, bypassing parliament; The Act stated categorically that EU law would take direct effect. No sanction was permitted. The June 23 vote was a massive vote against an overmighty executive, whose powers are reinforced by membership of the EU.
June 23 in other words was a reassertion of our inherited rights to sanction the rascals who govern us by elections to parliament; The referendum was the instrument to achieve this, because for the first time in over five hundred years, a UK government had persuaded parliament that it was best ruled from abroad. The idea was never er sold to the UK public.
What I know of US constitutional history suggests that this battle was won in 1776.

Jonathan - brilliantly phrased.
In simple English, 23 June is close enough to 4 July - Independence Day in Farage language.
But the real gem in your comments - EU laws and directions should have been taken to The Parliament.
Democracy would have delivered - the way The German Parliament is brought to bear in similar predicament.
Sovereignty of Democracy would have circumscribed the limitations to Executive Powers - as The Magna Carta warranted.
Regards
JS

"not superior in terms of the checks it imposes:"
In his press conf. yesterday, Trump refused to take a q from a CNN reporter, claiming it was a network of fake news. CNN is part of the Time Warner entities that ATT is trying to acquire. Trump can easily demand that as a condition for his administration agreeing to the acquisition, ATT must fire CNN's reporters, and he can make the demand implicit or secret. All it takes for the First Amendment to fall is the willingness to make it so by an unscrupulous person.

B. Eichengreen is quite correct in stating that the British parliamentary system makes it rather hard for popular will to prevail. Everyone agrees that Brexit was only possible via a referendum (which it was). Of course, that makes the British system fundamentally less legitimate than other democracies (such as Switzerland) where the public has more power. Clearly, B. Eichengreen doesn't like public influence over government. That doesn't make it a bad thing.

The Unz Review has an article on Pizzagate that is well worth reading. The following is from the Pizzagate article.

"Here’s how a blogger writing under the name Mehrdad Amanpour tells the story of how the story first started reaching people:

Some years ago, a friend sent me a shocking article. It said hundreds of British girls were being systematically gang-raped by Muslim gangs. It claimed this was being covered-up.

I’ve never had time for conspiracy theories, especially when they look as hateful as those in the article. So I checked the links and sources in the piece. I found an American racist-far-right website and from there, saw the original source was a similarly unpleasant website in the UK.

I did a brief search for corroboration from reputable mainstream sources. I found none. So I wrote a curt reply to my friend: “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t send me made-up crap from neo–Nazi websites.”

Some months later, I read the seminal exposé of the (mainly) ethnic-Pakistani grooming gang phenomenon by Andrew Norfolk in The Sunday Times.

I was stunned and horrified — not just that these vile crimes were indeed happening and endemic, but that they really were being ignored and “covered-up” by public authorities and the mainstream media."

New Comment

Pin comment to this paragraph

After posting your comment, you’ll have a ten-minute window to make any edits. Please note that we moderate comments to ensure the conversation remains topically relevant. We appreciate well-informed comments and welcome your criticism and insight. Please be civil and avoid name-calling and ad hominem remarks.

Log in/Register

Please log in or register to continue. Registration is free and requires only your email address.

Log in

Register

Emailrequired

PasswordrequiredRemember me?

Please enter your email address and click on the reset-password button. If your email exists in our system, we'll send you an email with a link to reset your password. Please note that the link will expire twenty-four hours after the email is sent. If you can't find this email, please check your spam folder.